In harness racing, a racehorse pulls a two-wheeled cart, or sulky, having a pair of shafts. The shafts are attached to a harness saddle circling the horse's body. As the horse trots, it rolls from side to side, and this motion is transmitted to the sulky through the shafts tending to cause the sulky to fish-tail, or zig-zag, on the track, and put a strain or drag on the horse's forward moving energy. Any side-to-side motion transmitted from the horse to the sulky detracts from the forward motion of the horse.
Another drag on the horse's forward motion occurs when sulky makes a turn or changes lanes. The connection between sulky and horse, the shafts, creates a barrier to the ability of the horse and sulky to negotiate a turn. When the horse enters a turn at a high rate of speed the sulky skids on the tracks and this outside force pulls on the sulky, contributing to horse-and-sulky loss of distance, time and racing position.
Finally, there are a number of forces that are always trying to separate the stationary-prone sulky from the moving horse, i.e., friction, wind resistance, gravity, etc.
It is desirable to reduce or eliminate these forces and movements that detract from the forward motion of horse and sulky, i.e., the side-to-side movements of the horse, skidding of the sulky, the outward pull and skidding of the sulky in a turn, and forces that try to separate the stationary-prone sulky from the moving horse.
Attempts have been made to overcome the above-noted disadvantages of the conventional systems for hitching a horse to a sulky by using various ball-joint arrangements and rigid mounted bullet type connectors. U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,991 discloses a harness connector device wherein a pin secured to the harness fits into a first ball joint connected through a linking member to a second ball joint, which in turn is connected to a shaft. As a result the link member is able to move relative to the shaft and harness to permit displacement of the harness relative to the shaft tending to alleviate side-slipping of the sulky.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,301 issued to Garland & Boutilier discloses a sulky cart that has shafts with off-set forward end portions and it attempts to eliminate the rigid connection between harness and sulky. The sulky cart is releasably attached to an off-set elongated sleeve member with a connector assembly on the forward end of the sleeve member. The connector assembly contains a rotatable ball with a central aperture for sliding over a harness pin secured to and extending from a harness saddle. The harness pin is provided near its outer end with a locked locking device, so that the cart can be hitched to the saddle harness by sliding the harness pin and locking device through the central aperture in the ball.
Finally, Boutilier U.S. Pat. No. 7,818,951 discloses an apparatus that connects the shafts of the sulky to a harness in a manner so as to isolate racehorse motion from the racing sulky. The apparatus includes a ball joint for a rotating attachment to the harness and a threaded end for fixed attachment to the sulky shaft. A dampening piston is provided between the ball joint and the sulky shaft to provide shock absorption and thereby isolate horse movement by dampening the running, trotting, pacing, and galloping motions of the horse from the sulky.
Thus, at best, the prior art devices are force isolation devices that attempt to alleviate side-slipping of the sulky by a ball-joint arrangement, or devices that attempt to eliminate the effects of too rigid a relationship between harness and sulky, or devices that use a sulky cart with shafts having off-set forward end portions and dissipate the energy from unwanted movements of the horse and sulky.
A need exists for a device doesn't simply dissipate or isolate unwanted forces but uses the unwanted sulky-horse forces to greatly reduce the unwanted forces. The device corrects any imbalance of the shaft positions and allows the horse to pull the sulky in the forward direction alone.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is a device for connecting the shafts of a sulky to a harness saddle and having the device capture the forces of unwanted sulky movements, redirecting and converting those forces to equalize any imbalance of the sulky shaft positions and allow the horse to pull the sulky evenly in the forward direction alone. Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and accompanying drawings of a preferred embodiment thereof and from the manufacture and use of the invention.